She isn't a ghost whisperer, but she learns from dead

Martha Mae Schmidt seems to like working with dead people.

At least they don't talk back to the woman know as the Cemetery Lady to many in St. Clair County and beyond. It's not that the dead aren't informative.

Schmidt, chairman of the cemetery and church records committee for the St. Clair County Genealogical Society, knows that the dead do speak, if only to say through their graves that they once were here, which can help people looking for traces of ancestors.

She helps record those voices in the latest cemetery book all about the Mascoutah City Cemetery. It lists more than 6,600 grave sites in the cemetery on the northwestern edge of the town.

Schmidt, of Marissa, said she and her fellow volunteer, Teri Bromley. of Granite City, have been working for more than four years to document the cemetery burials. It was four years of checking records, checking tombstones and rechecking everything, especially their typing.

"It was time it was getting done," she said. "We were both sick of it. It's the biggest cemetery book we've ever done.

"I guess you would call it a labor of love," she said.

The two women put in some dedicated research, checking each stone and grave and building on the records produced in a book done in the early 1980s. In some cases, her work has included translating records from the original German.

The books are valuable resources for people who are doing genealogy research. The stones may include names, dates and maiden names. Cemetery records also can have addresses and other information that makes life easier for ancestor snoops.

The book doesn't include the Holy Childhood Cemetery in Mascoutah, which is adjacent to the city cemetery. Schmidt said that will be a separate book.

Schmidt said the initial printing of the book is 100 copies, but they can always order more if necessary.